Black Market Mat Merchants .

[ffxjosh]

Black Market Mat Merchants….

So, I have an idea, which I thought would be a cool/fun mini game as well as helping to fix the broken economy as well as giving dapper some value.


The story behind it: For some reason or other the people who rule over the cities believe that selling basic Q150+ mats to be a crime, but with so many crafters needing materials to boost their crafting skill, there is obviously a huge demand for stock. So the BMMM have decided to fill this void. The work in the shadows, never in the same place for long, and try not to revisit the same place twice. The move across Atys selling Q250 Basic materials to whomever can answer their code word. Once there they will sell you packages of materials for a set price (not individual mats) This price goes up the more you spend with them as it’ll be harder for them to resupply their stocks. The Leaders of the 4 races are declared the BMMM outlaws and anyone who is known to be associated with them will have their rights suppressed.


What this means in terms of gameplay:


Every Season a Homin will spawn in random places around Atys. This could be in cities or somewhere obscure. This wont be announced and the players will literally have to stumble across him to find him. Like how you would find a hawker. On this Homin are 60 packages which contain Q250 mats. The lower the number the package the better the deal. For the sake of explanation, this Homin will have 18,600 mats split into these packages. The first package will contain 200 mats and cost 500,000 dapper(average price of mat 2500). Package 20 will cost 2,363,400 and will contain 300 mats(average price of mat 7878) Package 40 3,140,000 and contain 340 mats (Average price: 9235) (see chart included for more detailed info). So ultimately this Homin will take 159,150,600 off players and give out 18,600 mats. The Homin who sells the mats will ask a riddle, get it right and he opens a merchant window, get it wrong and you wont be able to trade with him until the next season. Also as a side effect every package you buy decreases your fame by 1 for the racial continent that it was sold in. (for example, buying 5 packages while the guy was in Pyr would decrease your Fyros fame by 5)


Every season the Homin will be fully stocked up.


All mentioned can be done with the tools the game dev(s) already have.

Thoughts, comments opinions? - Hopefully it makes sense

[jared96]

Like the concept, not the numbers....too small to raise my interest.

Suggestions:

1. Should be in 150, 200 and 250 regions.

2. Should be trade specific.....find the HA guy and he sells you a "set of mats" .... 300 shell, 300 lining, 200 stuffing, 200 clip ... the right proportion for you to make ya stuff.

3. Cost = 25 dapper per mat level:

One 150 mat = 1 x 150 x 25 = 3750
Ten 200 mats = 10 x 200 x 25 = 50000
Thousand 250 mats = 1000 x 250 x 25 = 6,250,000

4. Make finding him a mission. That is you find some unsavory character in each capital city (bartender for example) .... you pay him off to find out where he is. This does two things:

a) The mission, at least actually finding him, can be limited to once per season so no one individual can abuse the system. Can also have a time to find him, but if ya don't w/i allotted time frame, you can retake say 4 hours later.

b) It gives the solo player a chance to compete on a level playing field who can saturate the region w/ groups for the sole purpose of tracking this dude down.

[ffxjosh]

Like the concept, not the numbers....too small to raise my interest.

What numbers are too small? the seller would be holding 18k+ Mats seems like a reasonable amount. But obviously the chart was just ballparking becuase the idea would be that the first people to find him would save the most/get the cheapest mats and the people who find them last would have to decide if they'd want to pay that amount, only 500mil+ homins would pay (which is the point of this, to sink dapper )

I'm against giving them out as specific sets it'd feel like too much hand holding/remove player interaction with each other. I'm doing a fair bit of solo stuff, but even I would'nt want that. And the thing with ryzom is that nothing comes easy

Also getting Q150 + Q200 into the mix doesn't make sense when we're talking about basic mats and trying to act as a dapper sink (for the more/most wealthy)

4. Make finding him a mission. That is you find some unsavory character in each capital city (bartender for example) .... you pay him off to find out where he is. This does two things:

a) The mission, at least actually finding him, can be limited to once per season so no one individual can abuse the system. Can also have a time to find him, but if ya don't w/i allotted time frame, you can retake say 4 hours later.

I like this idea a lot, but it wouldn't be ideal to have the seller in the same couple of spots every season. So if the quest/barman was just to say what continent he was in, then sure give it a timer. The idea with lower mats & negative fame would limit the size of groups as people would want to get the best price and not lose too much fame.

[ffxjosh]

Most people like the way dappers have no real value. It means there's no market here for goldsellers spamming the chat channels with 24/7 shouts about their services, no farming parties driving everyone away from the good spots in order to monopolise things, no large scale infighting between players and guilds over access to good materials and equipment because it's all ultra-rare due to goldspammers farming it and either destroying it or selling it at ridiculously high prices (and then reselling the gold for real money to people who want/need the stuff the goldsellers sell in game, returning the dappers to the goldsellers).

Thanks, I'd rather avoid such an environment. Seen it often enough elsewhere.

With respect, what has value are mats, yet you dont see people spamming you for mats. And mats will still be the item of choice under the system proposed.

Do you know how difficult it is to get 100mil dapper in the typical sense of gold farming? You'd have to grind 10,000's of mats. Mats would be the only way to get dappers, as missions provide like 3,000 dapper at best for 25/30 mins worth of work. Super nodes and bosses would be too hard/too long /too few to provide a constant stream of dapper. So, what you'd see are 'goldfarmers' digging mats. Which doesn't happen and AFAIK has never happened on Atys in a proper scale, because it's too much work

So, even if goldfarmers found a way to sell you dapper, is getting a load of dapper to buy mats desireable? Unlikely, seeing as you can lose up to 60 fame if you were to somehow get a hold of 159million dapper. 18,600 mats, the total amount for this, lets say, $20 price wouldn’t be worth the 60 fame loss? Even if it was you’d have to craft the mats and 18600 isn’t a craft changing experience amount. Maybe a few levels in craft the high end craft. The money you’d make back on the items sold wouldn’t even be close to half. You’d be better off buying mats $10 for 10k. at least that way you’d not get the fame loss and be able to the specific mats you wanted.

This is a point I'd already thought about.

The idea is a dapper sink, not to sustain the economy, it’s means that the people who have millions of millions of dappers now have something productive to spend it on, other than a haircut/tattoo.

[gcaldani]

With respect, what has value are mats, yet you dont see people spamming you for mats. And mats will still be the item of choice under the system proposed.

Do you know how difficult it is to get 100mil dapper in the typical sense of gold farming? You'd have to grind 10,000's of mats. Mats would be the only way to get dappers, as missions provide like 3,000 dapper at best for 25/30 mins worth of work. Super nodes and bosses would be too hard/too long /too few to provide a constant stream of dapper. So, what you'd see are 'goldfarmers' digging mats. Which doesn't happen and AFAIK has never happened on Atys in a proper scale, because it's too much work

So, even if goldfarmers found a way to sell you dapper, is getting a load of dapper to buy mats desireable? Unlikely, seeing as you can lose up to 60 fame if you were to somehow get a hold of 159million dapper. 18,600 mats, the total amount for this, lets say, $20 price wouldn’t be worth the 60 fame loss? Even if it was you’d have to craft the mats and 18600 isn’t a craft changing experience amount. Maybe a few levels in craft the high end craft. The money you’d make back on the items sold wouldn’t even be close to half. You’d be better off buying mats $10 for 10k. at least that way you’d not get the fame loss and be able to the specific mats you wanted.

This is a point I'd already thought about.

The idea is a dapper sink, not to sustain the economy, it’s means that the people who have millions of millions of dappers now have something productive to spend it on, other than a haircut/tattoo.

I don't think the numbers are correct.

At least they don't work for people already master diggers (or enough high).

500.000 dappers for 200 mats? I dig (well, every master digger, really) around 250 mats with 3 prospect, soloing.

Grinding 10k mats is the contrary of what you said: it's relatively fast and easy. It never happened because ryzom was never a huge populated game, so goldfarmers always ignored it.

You don't need supernodes to dig for dappers, just a safe place with choice mats in a level 250 region on surface, and there are tons, if you don't mind the crafting needs.

The idea of a black market is nice, but i think the numbers should be tuned a bit.

What i like very much is the link between the vendor and your fame. Thuis is something that could be discussed more in depth.

[nauplius]

Since this is a black market, the solution is to offer things that aren't generally available: fireworks, cats, generic crafting mats, marauder crystals, speed/invul/hp eggs etc..